Accessibility Solutions Specialist

The NYS Digital Service is a team of strategists, product managers and technologists working with agencies to streamline and improve the digital experience across New York State. We strive to create a community that works together to provide programs and services to New Yorkers in an efficient and user-friendly way.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work under the direction of Solutions Director to build, research, propose, and evaluate a tech/digital solution or accessibility implementation.
• Conduct accessibility audits using a standardized framework and produce conformance reports for a range of digital products including websites, applications, web apps, SaaS products, and documents.
• Promote a culture of accessibility and work to create a community of practice around digital inclusion.
• Work with project management to ensure timelines and resources are appropriate to the project scope and business need.
• Work with state or vendor engineering teams to analyze, understand, and remediate accessibility issues at the code level.
• Assist state agencies, vendor or ITS engineering teams, or other stakeholders in developing an accessibility roadmap and strategy.
• Present concepts to a wide-range of audiences for internal review and key stakeholders.
• Assist in building simple technology solutions, alter or adapt common libraries to unique project needs, and/or contribute to a NYS Web Design System or NYS Digital Service Utilities Library.
• Commit or review code in NYS Digital Service or NYS ITS github repositories.
• Facilitate meetings with technical teams, clients, stakeholders, or content teams to understand and communicate requirements and challenges faced in implementing an accessibility strategy.
• Write and review tickets in an AGILE management/organizational tool and participate in sprint planning, retrospectives, and demos.

This position can be Albany or New York City based, may require routine evening and weekend work, as well as some travel on occasion between NYC and Albany.

The preferred candidate will have an understanding of digital accessibility and accessibility evaluations and a strong desire to help improve digital access and equity for all.

• Proficiency in core web languages including HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• Demonstrable familiarity with web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 / Section 508) and experience remediating accessibility issues at the code level.
• Demonstrable portfolio or examples of work providing accessibility guidance, code level remediations, audits, training materials, or other technical accessibility work.
• Experience conducting accessibility audits and creating conformance reports.
• Strong understanding of and familiarity with a range of assistive technologies, particularly screen readers.
• Strong communication and writing skills to distill complex technical problems into plain language for non-technical clients and stakeholders.
• Experience with organizational tools suited to AGILE software development such as Atlassian JIRA, GitHub Projects, or Azure DevOps, or similar.
• Broad knowledge of modern web browsers in terms of functions and limitations.
• Experience with and understanding of web content management systems.

Either: a bachelor’s degree in media, new media, English, communications, journalism, broadcasting, public relations, films, TV productions, or digital marketing AND three years of experience in public or governmental relations, and/or in writing or producing content for various media;

OR

A master’s degree in media, new media, English, communications, journalism, broadcasting, public relations, films, TV productions, and digital marketing AND two years of experience in public or governmental relations, and/or in writing or producing content for various media;

OR

Seven years of the experience described above.

Please apply for the Accessibility Solutions Specialist position via the official New York State Job site.

New York City based candidates, apply here.

Albany based candidates, apply here.